When Paul was asked by reporters Wednesday what he made of the impeachment talk emanating from some quarters of the political class in recent weeks, he offered a long, nuanced, see-where-you’re-coming-from nod to the conservatives who held such a position, before finally confessing, “I don’t support it.”

Paul is straining to navigate a dilemma that’s proving increasingly tricky for serious-minded Republican leaders across the country: They recognize that much of the recent impeachment buzz in the media is being fed by national Democrats in a cynical attempt to raise money from their liberal base and cast conservatives as kooks and cranks — yet they also have to reckon with the incontrovertible fact that a significant number of Republican voters believe the president’s misdeeds are, in fact, impeachable offenses.

A CNN/ORC poll released late last month found that 57% of Republicans nationwide support impeaching Obama. And here in Iowa, Shawn Dietz, a GOP state Senate candidate who attended one of Paul’s speeches, said many conservative voters are frustrated that congressional Republicans aren’t aggressively going after impeachment.